Oft 67© 
.025 BA 



THE 



FOREST OF DEAN. 



JOHN BELLOWS 






.,11^- -. ..■M.>r»«r-r.».^>Mr» , tz-^-^.-rr -jt^ :■ jrw»-->^-. ■ B ■- 'Bf.iJ'ilg,, 



THE FOREST OF DEAN. 



THE 



FOREST OF DEAN. 



JOHN BELLOWS, 



OF GLOUCESTER, ENGLAND. 



From Pkoceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, at the 
Annual Meeting, October, 1899. 



woxmux, mm., m, ^. g^. 

PRESS OF CHARLES HAMILTON, 
311 Main Street. 
19 0. 



Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/forestofdeanOObell 



THE FOREST OF DEAN. 



The Forest of Dean, in Gloucestershire, is one of the 
very few primeval Forests of Britain that have survived to 
this century. It has just lieen my priviiege to accompan}^ 
Senator Hoar on a drive through a portion of it, and he 
has asked me to write a few notes on this visit, for the 
American Antiquarian Society, in the hope that others of 
its members may share in the interest he has taken in its 
archaeology. 

I am indebted for many years' accjuaintance with George 
F. Hoar, through Oliver Wendell Holmes, to the circum- 
stance that the Hoar family lived in Gloucester from the 
time of the Tudors, if not earlier ; and this has led him to 
pay repeated visits to our old city, with the object of trac- 
ing the history of his forefathers. In doing this he has 
been very successful ; and only within the last few months 
my friend H. Y. J. Taylor, who is an untiring searcher of 
our old records, has come upon an item in the expenses of 
the Mayor and Burgesses, of a payment to Charles Hoar, 
in the year 1588, for keeping a horse ready to carry to Cir- 
encester the tidings of the arrival of the Spanish Armada. 
And Charles Hoar's house is with us to this day, quaintly 
gabled, and with over-hanging timlier-framed storeys, such 
as the Romans built here in the first century. It stands in 
Longsmith Street, just above the spot where forty years 
ago I looked down on a beautiful tessellated pavement of, 
perhaps, the time of Valentinian. It was eight feet below 
the present surface ; for Gloucester, like Rome, has been 
a rising city. 



6 

►Senator Hoar had l^eeii making hi.s liead(|uartei'.s at Mal- 
vern, and he drove over from there one afternoon, with a 
view to our o'oina" on in the same carriage to the Forest. 
A better })lan would have been to run l)y lail to Newnham 
or Lydney, to be met by a carriage from the " Speech 
House ", a government hotel in the centre of the woods ; 
but as the arrangement had been made we let it stand. 

To give a general idea of the positions of the places we 
are dealing Avith, I may sa}^ that Upton Knoll, where I am 
writing, stands on the steep edge of a spur of the Cottes- 
wold Hills, three and a half miles south of Gloucester. 
Looking north, we have before us the great vale, or rather 
plain, of the Severn, Ijounded on the right l^y the main 
chain of the Cotteswolds, rising to just over one thousand 
feet ; and on the left by the hills of Herefordshire, and the 
beautiful l)lue peaks of the Malverns ; these last being by 
far the most striking feature in the landscape, rising as 
they do in a sharp serrated line abruptly from the plain 
below. They are about ten miles in length, and the high- 
est point, the Worcestershire Beacon, is some fourteen 
hundred feet al)ove the sea. It is the spot alluded to in 
Macaulay's lines on the Armada — 

" Till twelve fair counties saw the fire on Malvern's lonely height" ; 

and two hundred years before the Armada it was on 
" Malvern hulles " that William Langland " forwandered " 
till he fell asleep and dreamed his fiery Vision of Piers 
Plowman — 

" In a soraere season, when softe was the souue" 

when, looking " esteward, after the sonne " he beheld a 
castle on Bredon Hill 

" Truthe was ther-ynne " 
and this great plain, that to him sj-^mbolized the world. 

" A fair felcl ful of folke fonde ich ther bytwyne; 
Alle manere of men ; the meue and the ryche." 

Now, in the afternoon light, we can see the towns of Great 






and North Malvern, and Malvern Wells, nestling at 
foot of the steep slant ; and eight miles to the right, but 
over thirty from ^vdiere we stand, the cathedral tower of 
Worcester. The whole plain is one sea of woods with 
towers and steeples glinting from every part of it ; notably 
Tewkesbury Abbey, which shines white in the sunlight 
some fourteen miles from us. Nearer, and to the right, 
Cheltenham stretches out under Cleeve Hill, the highest of 
the Cotteswolds ; and to the left Gloucester, with its 
Cathedral dwarfing all the buildings round it. This 
wooded plain before us dies away in the north into two of 
the great Forests of ancient Britain ; Wyre, on the left, 
from which Worcester takes its name ; and Feckenham, 
on the right, with Droit wich as its present centre. Every- 
where through this area we come upon beautiful old 
timber-framed houses of the Tudor time or earlier ; Roman 
of origin, and still met with in towns the Romans garri- 
soned, such as Chester and Gloucester, though they have 
modernized their roofs, and changed their diamond win- 
dow panes for squares, as in the old house of Charles 
Hoar, previously mentioned. 

Now if we turn from the north view to the west, we get 
a different landscape. Right before us, a mile off, is 
Robin's Wood Hill, a Cotteswold outlier ; in Saxon times 
called " Mattisdun " or " Meadow-hill," for it is grassed to 
the top, among its trees. "Matson" House, there at its 
foot, was the abode of Charles I. during his siege of 
Gloucester in 1643. To the left of this hill we have again 
the Vale of the Severn, and beyond it, a dozen miles 
away, and stretching for twenty miles to the southwest are 
the hills of the Forest of Dean, They are steep, but not 
lofty — eight hundred or nine hundred feet. At their foot 
yonder, fourteen miles off, is the lake-like expanse of the 
Severn ; and where it narrows to something under a mile 
is the Severn Brido-e that carries the line into the Forest 
from the Midland Railway. Berkeley Castle lies just on 



the left of it, but is buried in the trees. Thornburj 
Tower, if not Thornbury Castle, further south, is visible 
wlien the sun strikes on it. Close to the right of the 
bridi!:e is an old house that belonoed to Sir Walter Raleifjh ; 
and, curiously enough, another on the river bank not far 
above it is said to have been occupied by Sir Francis 
Drake just before the coming of the Armada. The Duke 
of Medina Sidonia, who commanded the Spanish fleet, was 
ordered to detach a force as soon as he landed, to destroy 
the Forest of Dean, which was a principal source for tim- 
ber for the British navy ; and it is probable that the 
Queen's ministers were aware of this and took measures in 
defence, with which Drake had to do. 

Two miles lower than the l)ridge is the Forest port 
of Lydney, now chiefly used for shipping coal ; and 
as the ex-Verderer of the Forest resides near it, and 
he would l)e able to furnish information of interest to 
our American visitor, we decided to drive to Lydney to 
begin . 

It was too late to start the same da}' , however ; and 
Senator Hoar staj'ed at Upton, where his visit happens to 
mark the close of what is known as the " open-field " sys- 
tem of tillage ; a sort of midway between the full posses- 
sion of land by freehold, and unrestricted common rights. 
The area over which he walked, and which for thousands 
of years has been divided by "meres" and boundary 
stones, is now to he enclosed, and so will lose its archaeo- 
logical claims to interest. In one corner of it, however, 
there still remains a fragment of Roman road, with some 
of the paving stones showing through the grass of the 
pasture field. The name of this piece of land gives the 
clue to its histor}^ It is called Sandford ; a corruption of 
Sarn ford, from sarnu (pronounced "sarney") to ijave; 
and fford, a road. These are Celtic-Cornish and Welsh 
words ; and it should be noted that the names of the 
Roman roads in the Island as Mell as those of the moun- 



9 

tains and rivers, are nearly all Celtic, and not Latin (jr 
Saxon. ^ 

We made a short d^lay in the morning, at Gloucester, 
to give Senator Hoar time to go on board the boat " Great 
Western " which had just arrived in our docks from Glouces- 
ter, Massachusetts, to visit the mother city, after a perilous 
voyage across the Atlantic by Captain Blackburn single- 
handed. Senator Hoar having welcomed the captain in 
his capacity of an old Englishman and a New Englander 
" rolled into one," we set out for Lydney, skirting the 
bank of one arm of the Severn which here forms an island. 
It was on this Isle of Alney that Canute and Edmund 
Ironside fought the single-handed battle that resulted in 
their dividing England between them.^ We pass on to 
the Island at Westgate Bridge ; and a quarter of a mile 
further leave it by Over Bridge ; one of Telford's beauti- 
ful works. Just below it the Great Western Railway 
crosses the river by an iron bridge, the western piers of 
which rest upon Roman foundations. 

One remarkable thing which I believe I forgot to men- 
tion to George Hoar as we crossed the Island, is, that 
the meadows on both sides of the causeway belong to the 
" Freemen " of the city ; and that, go back as far as we 
may in history, w^e cannot fin/i any account of the original 
foundation of this body. But we have this clue to it — 
that Gloucester was made into a Colon}'^ in the reign of 
Nerva, just before the end of the first century ; and in 
each Roman colony lands were allotted to the soldiers of 
the legions who had become freemen by reason of having 
served for twenty-five years. These lands were always on 
the side of the city nearest the enemy ; and the lands we 
are crossing are on the western side of Glevum, nearest 
the Silures, or South Welsh, who were alwa3^s the most 

1 The Wliitcombe Roman Villa, four miles east of Upton, stands in a field called 
Sandals. In Lyson's description of it, written in 1819, it stands as i'rt/vidells. The 
paved road ran through the dell. 

2 Sharon Turner's "Anglo Saxons," Vol. III., Chap. XV. 



10 

dangerous enemie.s the Romans had in Britain. Similarly, 
at Chester, the freemen's lands are on the west, or enemy's" 
side, by the Dee. In Bath it was the same. 

Immediately after passing "Over" Bridge we might 
turn off, if time permitted, to see Lassington Oak, a tree 
of giant size and unknown age ; but as Emerson says — 

" There's not enough for this and that. 
Make thy option whicli of two ! " 

and we make ours for Lydney. A dozen miles drive, 
often skirting the right bank of the Severn, Ijrings us to 
Newnham, a picturesque village opposite a vast bend, or 
horse-shoe, of the river, and over which we get a beauti- 
ful view from the burial ground on the cliff. The water 
expands like a lake, beyond which the woods, house-inter- 
spersed, stretch away to the blue Cotteswold Hills ; the 
monument to William Tyndale being a landmark on one 
of them — Nibley Knoll, flust under that monument was 
fouoht the last oreat battle between Barons. This battle 
of Nibley Knoll, between Lord Berkeley and Lord Lisle, 
left the latter dead on the field, at night, with a thousand 
of the men of the two armies ; and made Lord Berkeley 
undisputed master of the estates whose name he bore. 

We now leave the river, and turn inland ; and in a short 
time we have entered the Forest of Dean })roper ; that is, 
the lands that belong to the Crown. Their area may be 
roughly set down as fifteen miles by ten ; but in the time 
of the Conqueror, and for many years after, it was much 
larger ; extending from Ross on the north, to Gloucester 
on the east, and thence thirty miles to Chepstow on the 
southwest. That is, it filled the triangle formed b}" the 
Severn and the Wye between these towns. It is doubt- 
less due to this circumstance of its being so completely cut 
off from the rest of the country by these rivers, that it has 
preserved more remarkably than an}' other Forest the 
characteristics and customs of ancient British life, to which 



11 

we shall presently refer ; for their isolation has kept the 
Dean Foresters to this hour a race apart. 

Sir James Campbell, who was for between thirty and 
forty years the chief "Verclerer," or principal government 
officer of the Forest, lives near Lyclney. He received us 
with great kindness, and gave us statistics of the rate of 
growth of the oak, both with and without transplantation. 
Part of them are published in an official report on the For- 
est (A 12808. 6/1884. Wt. 3276. Eyre & Spottiswoode, 
London), and part are in manuscript with which Senator 
Hoar has been presented. Briefly, the chief points are 
these : 

In 1784 or thereabout acorns were planted in "Acorn 
Patch Enclosure" in the Forest; and in 1800 trees marked 
A and B were taken from this place and planted opposite 
the " Speech House." Two, marked D and F, were drawn 
out of Acorn Patch in 1807 and planted near the Speech 
House fence. Another, marked N, was planted in 1807, 
five and one-half feet high, in the Speech House grounds, 
next the road ; and L, M, N, X, have remained untrans- 
planted in the Acorn Patch. 

The dimensions were (circumference, six feet from the 
ground), in inches — 









A 


B 


D 


F 


L 


M 


N 


X 


In 1814, 


Oct. 


5, 


14f 


14 


11 


9* 


15t 


18J 


13 


24J 


1824, 


Oct. 


20, 


29i 


28f 


25| 


22i 


m 


23f 


30^ 


321 


1844, 


Oct. 


5, 


58^ 


58 


45 


46 


35 


34J 


57 


44i 


1864, 


Oct. 


1, 


73^ 


71 


59J 


67f 


46^ 


44 


73J 


56 



Another experiment tried by Sir James Cam}ibell him- 



self gave the following results 



Experiment begun in 1861 to test the value, if anj^ of 
merely lifting and replanting oak trees in the same holes 
without change of soil, situation, or giving increased space ; 
as compared with the experiment already detailed, which 



was beo'un in 1800. 



In 1861, tAvelve oak trees of about 25 years' growth. 



18G1, 


24 J inches. 


1866, 


37f " 


1886, 


nsi " 


1888, 


125^ " 


1890, 


133^ " 


1892, 


141 " 



12 

which had l)een self-sown (dropping from old trees after- 
wards cut down) in a thick plantation, were selected, all 
within gunshot of each other, and circumferences measured 
at five feet from the ground. Of these, six were taken up 
and immediately replanted in the same holes. The other 
six were not interfered with at all. 

Aggregate admeasurement of Aggregate admeasurement of 

six dug up and replanted. six not interfered with. 

Marked in white paint 1, Marked in red paint 1, 2, 

2, 3, &c. 3, &c. 

27 inclipt; /'-^m 2A inches more than the\ 
V transplanted ones, at starting.^ 
Alii " /*• e., 10^ inclies more than the\ 
2^ \ transplanted ones, at starting.,^ 

1 1 ft5. it (i-e., tlie transplanted ones had\ 
-'-^'-'B V now rej7«.wieri 10^^ inches. / 

1 9^1 i i /The transplanted trees in '88 had\ 
j.^<jj \^ outgrown the others by 2 ins. / 

1 2 u a /The transplanted trees in '90 hadN 
\ outgrown the others by 5| ins. ) 
1 T 1 1 " /The transplanted trees in '92 had\ 
4 V outgrown the others by 9| ins. / 

Thus jiroving that merely transplanting is beneficial to 
oaks ; the l^enefit, however, being greater when the soil is 
chano;ed and more air sfiven.^ 

From Lydney a drive of a few miles through pleasant 
ups and downs of woodland and field, brings us to White- 
mead Park, the official residence of the Verderer, Philip 
Baylis. The title "Verderer" is Norman, indicating the 
administration of all that relates to the " Vert " or " Green- 
ery " of the Forest; that is, of the timber, the enclosures, 
the roads, and the surface generally. The Verderer's Court 
is held at the " Speech House," to which we shall presentl}^ 
come : but the Forest of Dean is also a mineral district, 
and the Miners have a separate Court of their own. That 
some of their customs go back to a very remote antiquity 
we may well believe when we find the scale on which the 
Romans worked iron in the Forest ; a scale so great that 

1 The Earl of Ducie, who has had very large experience as an arboriculturist, does 
not hold the view that oaks are benefited by transplanting, if the acorns are sown 
hi good soil. 

In the case of trees that show little or no satisfactory progress after four years, but 
are only Just able to keep alive, he cuts them down to the root. In the next season 
80 i)er cent, of them send up shoots from two to three feet high, and at once start 
oir on their life's mission. 



13 

with their imperfect method of smelting with Catalan fur- 
naces, etc., so much metal was left in the Roman cinder 
that it has been sought after all the way down to within 
the present generation as a source of profit ; and in the 
time of Edward I., one-fourth of the king's revenue from 
this Forest was derived from the remelted Roman refuse. 

I have a beautiful Denarius of Hadrian which was found 
in the old Roman portion of the Lydney-Park Iron Mine 
in 1854, with a number of other silver coins, some of 
them earlier in date; but when we speak of "mines," the 
very ancient ones in the Forest were rather deep quarries 
than what would now be termed mines. As we drive 
along we now and then notice near the roadside, nearly 
hidden by the dense foliage of the bushes, long dark hol- 
lows, which are locally known as " scowles," another Celtic 
word meanino^ 2:oro;es or hollows ; somethino- like ghvll in 
the Lake District, "Dungeon Ghyll," and so on. These 
were Roman and British Hematite mines. If we had been 
schoolboys I would have taken Senator Hoar down into a 
scowl and we should both have come back with our clothes 
spoiled, and our arms full of the splendid hartstongue 
ferns that cover the sides and edges of the ravine. But 
they are dangerous places for any but miners or school- 
boys ; and I shrank from encouraging an enthusiastic 
American to risk being killed in a Roman pit, even with 
the ideal advantage of afterwards being buried with his 
own ancestors in England ! So I said but little about them. 

The Miners' Court is presided over by another govern- 
ment oiEcer, called the " Gaveller " ; from a Celtic word 
which means holding ; as in the Kentish custom of " Gavel- 
kind."^ These courts are held in "Saint Briavels" (pro- 
nounced " Brevels " ) Castle: a quaint old building of the 
thirteenth century, on the western edge of the Forest, 
where it was placed to keep the Welsh in check. It looks 



II suspect " Gaffer," the English equivalent of "Boss," may be from the same 
root: i. e,, the taker or contractor. 



14 



!»-':'^'- 




down on a hcautilul icculi ol tlic ii\ci Wye at Biii'^\\ear; 
and it was just on this edge that Wordsworth stood in 
1798, when he thought out his "Lines composed a few 
miles above Tintern Abbey," etc. 

" Five years have passed ; five summers, with the length 
Of five long winters ; and again I hear 
These waters rolling from their mountain springs 
With a soft inland murmur. Once again 
Do I behold these steep and lofty clifis." 

Senator Hoar will recall the scene from the railwa}^ below : 
the 



" Plots of cottage ground" that 
'Mid groves and copses" ; 



lose themselves 



and he will say how exactly the words describe 

" These hedge-rows ; hardly hedge-rows ; little lines 
Of sportive wood run wild," 

for they cover yards in width in some places, as he will 
remember my pointing out to him. The castle is placed 
on the outside of the Forest and close on the Wye, to 
guard what was seven centuries ago the frontier of Wales ; 
and the late William Philip Price (Commissioner of Eail- 



15 

ways and for many years member of Parliament for 
Gloucester) told me that when he was a boy the Welsh 
tongue was still spoken at Landogo, the next village down 
the river, midway between Bigs wear and Tintern, 

Philip Baylis showed us some of the old parchments 
connected with the Mine Court ; one document especially 
precious being a copy of the " Book of Denys," made in 
the time of Edward III. It sets forth the ancient customs 
which formed the laws of the miners. At this point the 
Verderer had to settle some matter of the instant, but he 
put us under the care of a young man who acted as our 
guide to one of the ancient and o-iant oaks of the Forest, 
on the " Church Hill " enclosure, about three-quarters of a 
mile up the hill above the Park. Nicholls ("History of the 
Forest of Dean," page 20) thinks the name Church Hill 
comes from the setting apart of some land here for the 
Convent of G^face Dieu to pay for masses for the souls of 
Richard II., his ancestors and successors. 

It was a steep climb ; and the evening twilight was com- 
ing on apace as we followed the little track to the spot 
where the old oak rises hiah above the general level of the 
wood, reminding one of Rinaldo's magical myrtle, in 
"Jerusalem Delivered " : 

" O'er pine, and palm, and cypress it ascends : 
And towering tlins all other trees above 
Looks like the elected queen and genius of the grove ! " 

Only that for an ocik of similar standing we must say 
" king " instead of " queen " ; eml^lem as it is of iron 
strength and endurance. 

It is not so much the girth of the tree as its whole 
bearing that impresses a beholder ; and I do not think 
either of us will forget its effect in the gloom and silence 
and mystery of the gathering night. 

Resisting a kindly pressure to stay the night at White- 
mead, that we might keep to our programme of sleeping 
at the Speech House, we started on the last portion of the 



16 

long day's drive. The road from Parkend, after we have 
climbed a considerable hill, keeps mostly to the level of a" 
high ridge. It is broad and smooth ; and the moonlight 
and its accompanying black shadows on the trees made the 
journey one of great beauty ; while the mountain air les- 
sened the sense of fatigue that would otherwise have 
pressed heavily on us after so long a da}^ amid such novel 
surroundings. The only thing to disturb the solitude is 
the clank of machinery, and the lurid lights, as we pass a 
colliery ; and then a mile or two more with but the sound 
of our own wheels and the rhythm of the horses' feet, and 
we suddenly draw up at an hotel in the midst of the For- 
est, its quiet well-lighted interior inviting us through the 
doorway, left open to the cool summer night air. We are 
at the Speech House. We had bespoken our rooms by 
wire in the morning : Senator Hoar had a chambre dlion- 
neur, with a gigantic carved four-post lied that reminded 
him of the great bed of Ware. His room like my 
"No. 5," looked out over magnificent bays of woodland to 
the north. The Speech House is six hundred feet above 
the sea, and the mountain breeze coming through the wide 
open window, with this wonderful prospect of oak and 
beech and holly in the moonlight, — the distance veiled, 
but scarcely veiled, b}^ the mist, suggest a poem untrans- 
latable in words, and incommunicable except to those who 
have passed under the same spell. We speak of a light 
that makes darkness visible ; and similarl}^ there are 
sounds that deepen the long intervals of silence with which 
they alternate. One or two vehicles driving past ; now 
and then the far-off call of owls answering one another in 
the woods — one of the sweetest sounds in nature — the 
varying cadence carrying with it a sense of boundlessness 
and infinite distance ; and with it we fall asleep. 

If there is anything more beautiful than a moonlight 
summer night in the heart of the Forest of Dean, it is 
its transformation into a summer morninsf, with the 



17 



sparkle of dew on the grass, and the sunrise on the trees ; 
with the music of birds, and the freshness that gives all 
these their charm. 



©<^^^09% 'Wm: 






!i6 



S^^^ 



%■ 



STONE OVER NORTH DOOR OF THE SPEECH HOUSE. 

As soon as we are dressed we take a stroll out among 
the trees. In whichever direction we turn we are struck 
by the abundance of hollies. I believe there are some 
three thousand full grown specimens within a radius of a 
mile of the Speech House. This may be due to the spot 
having been from time immemorial the central and most 
important place in the Forest. The roads that lead to it 
-still show the Roman paving-stones in many places, as 
Senator Hoar can bear witness ; and the central point of a 
British Forest before the Roman time would be occupied 
by a sacred oak. The Forest into which Julius Ca3sar 
pursued the Britons to their stronghold, w^as Anderida, 
that is, the Holy Oak ; from dar^ oak (Sanskrit, darn, a 
tree), and da, good. It is worth remarking that this idea 
survives in the personal name, Holyoak ; for who ever heard 
of " Holyelm," or "Holyash,"or a similar form compounded 
of the adjective and the name of any other tree than the 
oak ? If there is an exception it is in the name of the 
holly. The Cornish Celtic word for holly was Celyn, from 
Celli (or Kelli), a grove; literally a grove-one; so that 
the holly was probably planted as a grove or screen round 
the sacred oak. Such a planting of a holly grove in the 
central spot of the Forest in the Druid time, would account 
for these trees being now so much more numerous round 
the Speech House than they are in any other part of the 



18 



woods. The Saxon name is merely the word holy with 
the vowel shortened, as in Jioliil?iy ; and that the tree really 
vv^as regarded as holy is shown by the eustom in the Forest 
Mine Court of taking- the oath on a stick of hoily held in 
the hand. This custom survived down to our own times ; 
for Kedgwin H. Fryer, the late Town Clerk of Gloucester, 
told me he had often seen a miner sworn in the Court, 
touching the bible with the holly stick ! The men always 
kept their caps on when giving evidence to show they 
were " Free miners." 

The oaks, marked A. B., of whose growth statistics 
have already been given, stand on the side of the Newn- 
liam road opposite the Speech House. The Verderer is 
carrying on the annual record of their measurements. 

We return to the house by the door on the west ; the 
one at which we arrived last evening. It was then too 
dark to ol^serve that the stone above it, of which I took a 
careful sketch several years ago, is crumbling from the 
effects of weather, after having withstood them perfectly 
for two centuries. The crown on it is scarcely recogniza- 
ble ; and the lettering has all disappeared except part of 
the R. This is as it ap})eared Avhen I copied it. Steps 
are l)eing taken to preserve what is left by melting hard 
paraffin wax into the surface of the stone. 




We l)reakfast in the (luaint old Court room. Before us 
is the railed-off dais, at the end, where the Verderer and 



1!) 

his assistants sit to administer the law. On the wall 
behind them are the antlers of a dozen stags ; reminders 
of the time, about the middle of the present century, when 
tlie herds of deer were destroyed on account of the con- 
tinual poaching to which they gave occasion. Many of 
the gases that come before the Court now are of simple 
trespass. 

This quaint old room, with its great oak beam overhead, 
and its kitchen grate wide enough to roast a deer — this 
strano-e blending of an hotel dining-room and a Court of 
Justice, has nevertheless a link with the far distant past 
more wonderful than anything that has come down to us 
in the ruins of Greece or Rome. 

Look at the simple card that notifies the dates of hold- 
ing the Verderer's Court. Here is an old one which the 
Verderer, Philip Bay lis, has kindly sent to Senator Hoar 
in response to his request for a copy. 

V. R. 

Her Majesty's Foi'est of Dean, 
Gloucestershire. 

VERDERERS' COURT. 

Verderers : 

Charles Bathurst, Esq. Sir Thomas H. 

Crawley-Boevey, Bart. 

Maynard Willoughby Colchester-Wemyss, Esq. 

Russell James Kerr, Esq. 

Deputy-Surveyor : 

Philip Baylis, Esq. 

Steward : 

James Winfcle. 

-NOTICE. 

The VERDERERS of Her Majesty's Forest of Deau hereby give 
Notice that the COURT of ATTACHMENT of our Sovereign Lady the 
Queen for the said Forest will be holden by adjournment, at the Speech 
House, in the said Forest, at half -past Two o'clock, in the afternoon, 
on the follovping days during the year 1897, viz. : 

Wednesday, the 27th January ; 
Monday, the 8th March ; 
Saturday, the 17th April; 
Thursday, the 27th May ; 



20 

Tuesday, the 6th July ; 
Monday, the 16th August; 
Friday, the 24th September ; 
Wednesday, the Srcl November ; 
Monday, the 13th December. 

James Wintle, 

Steward. 
Newnham, 1st January, 1897. 

Many years ago I stood in this Court Room examining 
a similar notice, puzzled at the absence of any system or 
order in the times appointed for the sittings, which did not 
come once a month, or every six weeks ; and did not even 
fall twice in succession on the same day of the week. 
Turning to the landlord of the hotel I asked, " What is the 
rule for holding the Court ? When is it held ? " " Every 
forty days at twelve o'clock at noon" was the reply. 
Reflection showed that so strange a periodicity related to 
no notation of time with which we are now in touch ; it 
must belong to a system that has passed away ; but what 
could this l>e? 

We are reminded hy the date of the building we are in 
(1(580), that the room itself cannot have been used for 
much more than two centuries for holding the Courts. 

But there was a Verderer's Court held in several Forests 
besides this Forest of Dean, long before the Stuart days. 
The oflice itself is mentioned in Canute's Forest Charter, 
dating back nearly nine hundred years ; and as at that 
period about a third of England was covered with Forests, 
their influence must have Ijeen very powerful ; and local 
laws and customs in them must have been far too firmly 
estaljlished for such a man as Canute to alter them. He 
could only have confirmed what he found ; much as he 
confirmed the laws of nature as they affected the tides at 
Southampton ! 

The next Forest Charter of national importance after 
Canute's, is that of Henry IH., in 1225. It is clear that 
he, again, made no material change in the old order of 
things ; and in recapitulating the old order of the Forest 



21 

Courts, he ordains that the Court of Attachment (called in 
Dean Forest the Court of the Speech) was to be held 
every forty days. This Court was one of first instance, 
simply for the hearing of evidence and getting up the 
cases for the " Swainmote," ^ which came tJiree times a year. 
The Swains were free men ; and at their mote evidence 
was required from three witnesses in each case, on which 
the Verderer and other officers of the king passed sentence 
in accordance with the laws laid down in this Charter. 
From this Swainmote there was a final ap})eal to the High 
Court of the Judges in Eyre (Eyre, from " errer " to 
wander, being the Norman French for Itinerant, or, on 
Circuit) which was held once in three years. 

The forty-day court was common to all the ancient 
forests of Britain ; and that they go l)ack to before the 
time of Henry HI. is clear from the following extracts 
from Coke's Fourth Institute, for which I am indebted to 
the kindness of James G. Wood, of Lincoln's Inn. 
Cap. LXXIII. 

Of the Forests and the Jurisdiction of the Courts 

[p 289] of the Forest. 

****** 

And now let us set do^vn the Courts of the 
Forest — Within every Forest there are these 
Courts 

1 — The Court of the Attachments or the Wood- 
mote Court. This is to be kept before the 
Verderors every forty days throughout the year 
— and thereupon it is called the Forty-day 
Court — At this Court the Foresters bring in 
the Attachments de viridi et venalione [&c &c] 
* * * * * * 

2 — The Court of regard or Survey of daj^s is 
holden every third year [&c &c] 



1 Tliat the Forest Charter of Hen. HI. did not establish these courts is i>roved 
from a passage in Manwood, cap. 8, which runs thus : "And the said Swainmotes 
shal not be kept but within the counties in the which they have been used to be 
kept." 

3 



22 

3. The Court of Swainmote is to be holden 
])efore the Verderors as judges by the Steward of- 
the Swainmote thrice in every year [&c] 

* * * *- * » 

4. _ _ - The Court of the Justice Seat holden 
before the Chief Justice of the Forest - - aptly 
called Justice in eire - - - and this Court of 
the Justice Seat cannot be kept oftener than 
every third year. 

* * * * * * 

[319] For the antiquity of such Forests within England 
as we have treated of the best and surest argument 
thereof is that the Forests in England (being in 
number 69) except the Neiv Forest in Hampshire 
erected by William the Conqueror as a conqueror, 
and Hampton Court Forest by Hy 3, by 
authority of Parliament, are so ancient as no 
record or history doth make any 7nention of any 
of their Erections or beginnings. 

Here then we have clear evidence that nearly seven 
hundred years ago the Verderer's Court was being held at 
periods of time that bore no relation to any division of the 
year known to the Normans or Plantagenets, or, before 
them, to the Saxons, or even, still earlier, to the Romans. 
We are, therefore, driven back to the period before the 
Roman invasion in Britain, and when the Forest legislation 
was, as Cffisar found it, in the hands of the Druids. In 
his brief and vivid account of these people he tells us that 
they used the Greek alphabet ; and as he also says they 
were very proficient in astronomy, it seems clear that 
the}^ had their astronomy from the same source as their 
literature. Their asti'onomy involved of necessit}^ their 
notation of time. And the Greeks, in turn, owed their 
astronomy to the Egyptians, with whom the year was 
reckoned as of three hundred and sixt}^ days ; and this 
three hundred and sixtj^-day year gives us the clue to the 
forty-day period for holding the Forest Courts in Ancient 
Britain. 



23 

We cannot fail to be struck, as we examine the old 
Forest customs, with the constant use of the number three, 
as a sacred or " lucky " number, on every possible occasion. 
We have just seen the role it plays in the Mine Court, 
with its three presiding officials, its jury of multiples of 
three (twelve, twenty-four, forty-eight) ; its holly stick 
oath sworn by three witnesses. We have noticed the 
Swainmote Court, also requiring three witnesses, held 
three times a year, and subordinate to the Court of Eyre 
held once in three years ; to which should be added the 
perambulation of the Forest bounds at the same triennial 
visit in Eyre, when the king's oiBcers were accompanied 
by nine foresters in fee (three threes) and twenty-four 
jurors (eight threes). 

To go fully into the role of the number three in British 
traditions would require a profound study ; but it may be 
useful briefly to note its influence on the Bardic poetrj^ — 
the Triads, where the subjects are all grouped in threes. 
Nor was this predilection confined to the Island. We find 
it affecting the earliest history of Rome itself, with its 
nine gods (" By the nine gods he swore ") and the nine 
books which the Sibyl destroyed by threes, till the last 
three were saved. Then we have the evidence in the 
name nundina ^ for a market, that the week was originally 
a cycle not of seven, but of nine da3^s ; and our own say- 
ino' that a given thing is a " 7iine days' wonder " is undoul)t- 
edly a survival from the period when the nine days made 
a week,^ for such a phrase expresses a round number or 
unit of time ; not nine separate days. 



iTlie Romans meant by nundinm periods that were really of eight days; but they 
made them nine by counting in the one frovi which they started. So accustomed 
were they to this method of notation that the priests who had the control of the 
calendar, upset Julius Caesar's plan for intercalating a day once in four years 
(" Bissextile") by insisting that the interval intended was three years! Augustus 
was obliged to rectify this by dropping the overplus day it occasioned. 

It is this Roman custom of inclusive reckoning which has led to the French 
calling a week huit jours, and a fortnight, une quinzaiue. 

-The word week comes from ivika (=Norsk vlkaj to bend or turn. The idea con- 
nected with it was no doubt that of the moon's turning from one of its quarters to 



24 

Shakespeare had l)een struck with the relationship of 
the nine day week, alluded to in the proverb, to the more 
modern one of seven days, as is shown by his very clever 
juxtaposition of the tAvo in " As You Like It." In Act 
III., Scene 2, he makes Ckdia say to Rosalind 

"But didst thou hear ivithout wondering how thy name should be 
hanged and carved upon these trees? " 

And Rosalind replies 

" I was seven of the nine days out of the wo7ider before you came"— e?c. 

Gloucester, down till the Norman time, and after, was 
the great manufactory of the iron Ijrought from the Forest 
of Dean. The metal was brought up the Severn by barges, 
to the quay which stood at the road running straight down 
from Longsmith Street (in which Charles Hoar's house 
stands), and buried under all this street we find the cinder 
and slag of the Roman forges. In Domesday Book (which 
was ordered to be drawn up at a Parliament in Glouces- 
ter in 1083) it states that the City had paid to the king 
(?'. e., Edward the Confessor) ten dicres of iron yearly. 
This is very remarkable, for a dicre was three dozen 
i"ods or bars ; so that the whole tribute was three hundred 
and sixty bars, or one bar per day for the Druid year of 
three hundred and sixty days? 

And now we come back to the Verderer's Court at ihe 



the next. I can remember when some of the people in " the Island " in Gloucester 
always made a point of Utrning any coins they had in their pockets when it was 
new moon and repeating a sort of invocation to the moon ! How or when the nine 
day week was exchanged by western nations for the seven day one, we do not 
know; but it is likely that it may have been brought about by the Phoenicians and 
Jews, who regarded the number seven as the Druids regarded three — as something 
especially sacred. They had much of the commerce of Southern Europe in their 
hands, and, therefore, a certain power in controlling the markets, which it would 
be a convenience to Jews to 2i'>'event falling on the sabbath day. The circum- 
stance that the lunar month fitted in with four weeks of seven days no doubt 
made it easier to effect the change from 7mndince. 

' For more than a century after Julius Caasar had altered the year to three hun- 
dred and sixty-five days, the Roman soldiers were still paid at the ancient rate of 
three hundred and sixty daj-s only, losing the rest as '' terntinaUa," or days not 
counted as belonging to the year ! The proof of this is that in the time of Domitian 
a soldier's year's pay divided by three hundred and sixty gives an even number 
of ases. 



25 

Speech House with a clear reason for its being held 
'^ every forty days at twelve o'clock at noon.'' 

Forty days was the ninth of the Druid year of three 
hundred and sixtj^, and was a period of five weeks of eight 
daj^s eacli, but which according to tlie ancient metliod of 
counting were called ^^ nine-days.'" And the reason the 
Court sits " at Twelve o'clock at noon " is because the 
Druid day began at noon. Even now, within ten miles of 
where 1 write, the children on Minchinhampton Common, 
on the Cotteswold Hills, keep up '^ old May Day,'' which 
was the opening of the Druid year, though they are igno- 
rant of this. Bo3^s and girls arm themselves on that day 
with bouohs of the l^eech, and o-q throuo-h certain oames 
with them ; but exactly as the clock strikes twelve they 
throw them away, under pain of being stigmatized as 
''May fools!" 

Well has Oliver Wendell Holmes put it, that ''All things 
are in all things ! " Even this common-place list of Court 
days in the Forest of Dean becomes a beautiful poem 
when the light of such a past shines on it ; just as the 
veriest dust of the Krakatoan volcano evolves itself into 
every color of the rainbow when it rises into the sunset sky. 

Since writing this paper I find that Philip Bay lis, the 
Verderer of the Forest of Dean, has kindly sent three 
or four dozen of young oak trees from the government 
plantations, to Washington, in order that they ma}^ be 
planted there and in some other places in the United 
States, to begin the century with. The state department 
of Agriculture has arranged for the planting of these oaks, 
and the periodical record of their measurements, so that 
a valuable basis will be established for an ex[)eriment that 
may be carried on for a century, or more ; and we, the 
archaeologists of the nineteenth centmy, shall have wiped 
away the stigma implied in the old Aberdeen baillie's 
remarlv, that as Posteerity had never done anything for 
us, we ought not to do anything iov posteerity ! 



2f) 

The Earl of Ducie has sent, accompanying these Forest 
of Dean oaks, four small plants, seedling-s from the great 
Chestnut Tree on his Estate at Tortworth : the larg-est and 
oldest of its sort in Great Britain. It measures forty-nine 
feet round the trunk. 

Leaving the Speech House for Coleford and Newland we 
descend a steep hill for half a mile, and crossing the rail at 
the Station we begin to ascend the opposite rise through 
the woods. As the carriage climbs slowly up we keep on 
the lookout for the margin-stones of the Roman paving 
which here and there show through the modern metaled 
surface — pieces fifteen to twenty inches long by about five 
inches in thickness, and set so deep in the ground that 
eighteen hundred years' wear has never moved them. They 
are buttressed on the outer edge by similar blocks set four 
or five inches lower, and themselves forming one side of 
the solidly paved water-way or gutter which was con- 
structed as part of every such road on a steep gradient, to 
secure it from abrasion by flood or sudden rush from heavy 
rainfall. There are many excellent examples of this in the 
Forest of Dean. We are on the watch, however, for some 
part where the '■^margines" remain on both sides of the way. 
At last we come upon such a place, and alighting from the 
carriage we strain the tape measure across at two or three 
points. The mean we find to be thirteen feet and seven 
inches. As the Roman foot was just over three per cent, 
less than ours, this means that the Romans built the road 
here for a fourteen-foot way. So far as I have examined 
their roads they were always constructed to certain stand- 
ard widths — seven feet, nine feet, eleven feet, thirteen 
feet, fourteen feet, or fifteen feet. 

It is not too much to say that most of the main roads in 
England are Roman ; ])ut the very contiiniity of their use 
has caused this to be overlooked. All the old roads in the 
Forest of Dean have been pronounced by the Ordnance 
Surveyors, after close examination, to bear evidences of 



27 

Roman paving, although for some centuries since then 
wheel carriages went out of use here ! 

There is a vivid description in Statins of the making of 
an imperial-road through such another Forest (if not indeed 
this very one!) especially worth recalling here, because it 
was written at very nearly the period of the building of 
this track over which we are journeying ; ^. e., near the end 
of the first century. 

The poet stands on a hill from which he can see the 
effect of the united work of the army of men who are 
engaged in the construction : perhaps a hundred thousand 
forced laborers, under the control of the legionary soldiers 
who act as the engineers. He makes us see and 
hear with him the tens of thousands of stone cutters and 
the ring of their tools squaring the "setts" ; and then one 
platoon after another stepping forward and laying down its 
row of stones followed by rank after rank of men with the 
paviours' rammers, which rise and fall at the sweep of the 
band-master's rods, keeping time in a stately music as they 
advance ; the continuous falling and crashing of the trees as 
other thousands of hands ply the axes along the lines, that 
creep, slowly, but visibly, on through the Forest that no 
foot had ever trodden — the thud of the multitudinous 
machines driving the piles in the marshy spaces ; the whole 
innumerable sounds falling on the ear like the roarino; of a 
ofreat and vast sea. 

The language Statius uses is more simple than mine ; 
but this is substantially the picture he gives : and I know 
of nothing that so impresses on the imagination the 
thunder of the power of the Roman Empire as this 
creation in the wilderness, in one day, of an iron way that 
shall last for all time. 

We are here in the sweet silence of a summer morning, 
eighteen hundred years after such a scene, and able men- 
tally to catch some glimpse of it ; some echo of the storm 
that has left behind it so ineffaceable a mark. 



28 

" I intended to ask you just now whether the man 3^011 
.spoke to in the road was a typical native of the district ? " 
said Senator Hoar. " He was dark and swarthy, with very 
black hair and piercing eyes ; not at all like the majority of 
people we see in Gloucester for instance." " Yes, he is a 
typical Forester " ; exactly such a man as Tacitus describes 
his Silurian ancestors ; so Spanish in appearance that he 
tries to account for it by remarking that " that part of Brit- 
ain lies over against Spain-'" ; as if it was such a short run 
across the Bay of Biscay to the upper end of the Bristol 
Channel that nothing would be more natural than for Span- 
iards to sail over here with their wives and families and 
become Silures ! 

These Western Britons, both here in the Forest and in 
Cornwall certainly remind one of Spaniards. The type is 
of an older Celtic than that of the present Welsh people 
proper, as some evidences in the language also point to the 
occupation being an older one. With respect to this par- 
ticular district of the Forest and the East of Monmouth- 
shire, one more element must not be left out of the account : 
and that is, that Caerleon was founded by the second legion 
being removed to it from Gloucester about the time this 
road was made ; and that it remained for three hundred 
years the headquarters of that legion, which was a Spanish 
one raised in the time of Augustus. Forty years ago I 
remember being at Caerleon (two and one half miles from 
Newport ) , when I met the children of the village coming 
out of school. It was hard to believe they were not Span- 
ish or Italian ! 

At all events this part of Britain lies over against Bos- 
ton ; and Americans can cross over and see Caerleon for 
themselves more easily than the people could, of whom 
Tacitus wrote. 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



022 121 162 5 






